Mysterious Dark Energy Has Existed For Most of Time, Scientists Say

Peeling back both space and time, scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have found that the strange force known as dark energy appears to have existed for at least the past two-thirds of the universe's history.

Dark energy is a mysterious repulsive force that opposes gravity, causing the universe to expand. Albert Einstein posited that a form of the force existed nearly a century ago by, but it was not discovered until 1998.

Because these supernovae release known amounts of energy, measuring the amount of light arriving on Earth serves as a convenient distance marker to any galaxy in which one is observed.

"[It's] much like judging the distance of a faraway lighthouse by its apparent brightness," said Louis-Gregory Strolger, an astronomer at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, in a press conference yesterday.

Other instruments allow astronomers to determine how quickly distant stars are moving, giving hints to the forces acting on the galaxies they belong to.

The farther away the supernovae are, the longer their light has been traveling and the further back in time the explosion occurred.

To date astronomers have detected 23 such explosions from about 9 billion years ago, announced a team led by Adam Reiss, an astrophysicist at Baltimore, Maryland's Space Telescope Science Institute, yesterday afternoon.

Information garnered from these supernovae indicates that dark energy not only existed back then, but that it was about as strong then as today.

Physics' Biggest Problem

Because little is known about dark energy, this is a "significant clue" to what the force might be, scientists say.